I’m still stunned that it’s actually happening.
On Friday, a big-budget version of the classic TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. will be released. It’s been over 50 years since the original series first aired, and I first discovered over a decade later as a preteen growing up just outside Birmingham Alabama. I was already a Bond fan, but when I discovered Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin… well, I was as happy as a Thrush agent who had just intercepted top-secret communiques.
I bought as many of the collectibles as I could – the U.N.C.L.E. gun, the novels, the board games, the action figures. I was a second-generation fan, who quickly connected with others who had discovered the show long after it had originally aired (One of those, John Champion, is still my friend to this day – you may know him from his Mission Log podcast).
For the longest time, the show was unavailable, and so I had to catch (and videotape) reruns. When it finally came out on home video in 2008, I bought it immediately, and started rewatching the best of the episodes. I had intended to rewatch it from the very beginning, and started a column on this very blog. Named U.N.C.L.E. a Day, I was able to rewatch and comment on most of the first season before life intervened. So here, for your perusal, are links to the best of those revisits:
I hope the movie succeeds, if only so it will renew interest in the original. Hopefully this will also get Robert Vaughn some more work – I’m tired of seeing him on lawyer commercials.
Oh, and here’s the first episode, by the way. Enjoy.